Wednesday, November 1, 2017

A small barn for the summer house 14, starting on the staircase.

In the evenings I have tried to start out on the staircase for the small barn. The work is not very efficient, since both Gustav and Asger have started some projects in the shop too. I try to help them out, and once they are tucked into bed, I'll have something like an hour where I can use the shop by myself.
I have milled the steps, and they are pretty close to the thickness of the floor boards (1.75"). The two longitudinal parts of the staircase (I have no idea what the correct English word is?) Are a bit thinner. I would have liked them to be the same size, but the two boards that I had of the correct width were fairly twisted, so it took some thickness to get them flat and level. I suppose that I could have milled some new boards, but they would not have been as dry as those, and they finally ended up something like 1 3/8" which I think will be strong enough.

I have been looking as Das Zimmermannsbuch for some inspiration, and they suggest that for the more modern approach you should attache the steps by means of sliding dovetails.
An older and simpler method is to just use a groove and either make a tenon on half of the steps or secure the steps by means of nails. I think that I'll go with the groove and nails model. Because the barn is supposed to be kept a bit simple.

Right now I have had to devise some special workholding, in order to be able to joint the edges of the longitudinal parts.
10' is a bit too long for my workbench, but perhaps that could justify building another and larger one?

There will be very 8" in height difference between each step, and the angle of the stairs will be 58 degrees. So it will be a fairly steep staircase, but this is to avoid that it will take up too much space in the relatively small room of the barn.

Asger sanding a cutting board. Gustav's apple crates are in the background-

Thanks for the information, I had suspected that they were called stretchers, but stringers hadn't crossed my mind.

You are pretty correct about the rise/run ratio. I just mentioned the angle to visualize it for myself, I guess it is because I am not a trained carpenter, so a ratio doesn't immediately make sense to me, but an angle is something that I can clearly visualize in my head.

I am going to use a framing square like you suggests, as I think it will give a more accurate layout compared to my original idea of using a bevel gauge.

I know that it is a bit of a steep staircase, but since it will not be used on a daily basis, I guess that it will be OK.

Great to see you back in the shop! Of my two boys ever took up shop space I'd fall over from shear surprise:) They spend all their time playing soccer. Can't wait to see the stairs. Thanks for sharing. Take Care,Chris

Hi Brian.Now I know two persons in our household who would love a fireman's pole, but Mette and I are not those two. Luckily for me those two people are not the ones who makes the decisions.. :-)I'll also try to stay from making an emergency slide or an underground escape tunnel. (though a tunnel would actually be cool and necessitate investing in some new machinery)

My sister once bought a house that happened to have an indoor shooting range in the basement. There was a weird panel in the wall with a door, and behind the door was a tunnel about 25 yards long. There was a wire with a pulley so you could run a target to the back of the tunnel and then shoot at it from the comfort of the basement.

I wonder what the neighbors thought every time they heard gunfire coming from inside that house?